Your Customer: Kept or Losing?

Pick one real product, service, or business you know well — as a customer, an employee, or a manager — and run it through this diagnosis.

Name the tension

Write down the product or business. Then complete this sentence honestly: 'We are good at getting customers but struggle to ___' or 'We keep customers but rarely know ___.'

Sort the forces

List three things that pull customers toward you and three that push them away. Be specific — not 'good product' but 'next-day delivery on orders over €30.'

Pulling in

Pushing away

Urgency check

Mark where this tension sits on the spectrum. Is it a slow leak or a crisis? Mark it and write one word that justifies your position.

Slow leak

Active crisis

The obvious answer

Write the obvious fix — the one any consultant would recommend in ten minutes. Then look back at your 'pushing away' column from step 2: does your obvious answer actually address those forces, or does it avoid the hardest one?

The hidden trade-off

Attack your obvious answer: what does it cost, what does it ignore, and who inside the organisation would resist it? Commit to the one word that names what you were avoiding — then write one sentence explaining why naming it matters.

Why that word?

Discuss Share your hidden trade-off word with a partner — does theirs reveal the same pattern as yours?

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